
In light of the recent wave of book bannings taking place across The United of States, The Stacks is spending all week talking with people who are impacted by the bannings, ranging from students to educators, authors, and more, to help us think about what is at stake and what we can do.
To wrap up Banned Books in The Stacks we’ve brought back friend of the podcast Kiese Laymon to help us make sense of this entire week of programming. Kiese is the author of the banned book, Heavy, as well as Long Division and How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. We talk today about how it feels to have your work banned, what children have a right to know, and what else Kiese sees as tied to this wave of book bans.
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Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes. You can also find everything we talked about on Amazon.

- Heavy by Kiese Laymon
- How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America by Kiese Laymon
- Long Division by Kiese Laymon
- Seeing White (Scene on Radio)
- Men (Scene on Radio)
- Radiolab
- Chenjerai Kumanyika
- “Missouri school district bans Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye'” (Danielle Campoamor, Today)
- Toni Morrison
- George M. Johnson
- The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
- Maya Angelou
- Cinemax
- All About Love by bell hooks
- The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee
- National Book Awards 2021
- All The She Carried by Tiya Miles
- The 1619 Project edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones and The New York Times
- Maus by Art Spiegelman
- Fun Home by Alison Bechdel
- The 1619 Project (The New York Times)
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- Native Son by Richard Wright
- The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- Gorilla, My Love by Toni Cade Bambara
- bell hooks
- Kimberlé Crenshaw
- The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
- Spotify
- Youtube
- “‘The Great Believers,’ ‘Heavy: An American Memoir,’ receive 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction” (American Library Association)
- “Day 1– Banned Books in The Stacks with Katrina Stokes and Thursday Williams” (The Stacks)
- Arianna Davis
- Clint Smith
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
- Freedom Means… (Grace Aldrich & Emma Redden)
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington D.C.)
- Roots (ABC, 1977)
- Jason Reynolds
Connect with Kiese: Twitter | Instagram | Website
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